National Women Farmers' Day: Adivasi Women Call for Respect and Recognition
Today, on 𝗡𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝗪𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀’ 𝗗𝗮𝘆, we stand with 𝗔𝗱𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘀𝗶 𝗪𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗿𝗺𝗲𝗿𝘀 and 𝗙𝗼𝗿𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗿𝘀 in their demands for land titles, agroforestry benefits, schemes, skills and technology, real structural solutions across three key pillars:
Our Labour: Recognising women's labour as cultivators, caretakers and conservors of farmlands, forests and commons. Women's rights to decent wages, employment guarantee support for land development and regeneration, technology, transport and training to reduce women's burden of work.
Our Land Entitlements: State actions and budgets to support Adivasi Women Farmers should include women's tenurial rights, government assigned land for landless women farmers, subsidies and interest free bank loans to lands owned by women, incentives for land registration in women's names, promotion of food crops, wildfoods, medicinal plants, springsheds and forest conservation actions of Adivasi Women, climate finance for women small and marginal farmers including locally-led renewable energy for women farmers and NTFP collectors, promotion of Adivasi Women's FPOs, women's local markets, market yards, storage, public transport and value addition facilities.
Our Agroecological Knowledge: Centering indigenous women's practises of ancestral ecological knowledge, their access and custodianship to forests and forest management practices, their right to coexistence in their habitats, rejuvenation of forest resources and wildfoods as living, climate-resilient solutions for community food security and forest wellbeing.
Today and every day, we celebrate Adivasi Women's resilience in holding up our forests and biodiversity for local and global communities!
